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Scientists plan to test whether sharks enjoy listening to Christmas pop songs, after US research showed fish could recognize melody. Chris Brown, senior marine biologist at the Loch Lomond aquarium, said seasonal music would be played through walkthrough underwater tunnels where they can be heard by dozens of nurse sharks, black-tip reef sharks, and ray species. Experts will then monitor the sharks' reactions to different songs. We'll play everything from Kim Wilde and Mel Smith's Rocking Around the Christmas Tree and Merry Christmas Everybody by Slade to Wham's Last Christmas. We may find they prefer something softer like White Christmas by Bing Crosby," Brown said. Thank you for answering this question science.

Ah, but how do we know what they like? I read (in a fairly dubious source, an Uncle John's Bathroom Reader) that Great Whites can be persuaded to mate in captivity through listening to "My heart will go on" by Celine Dion. The Titanic version.

Apparently, no other song or version will do the trick. SO, if they like that, they may actually like this crap, in which case there's finally a point to the whole industry.

You know, that was my first reaction also, but it might not be as dumb as it sounds. The summery says that someone showed fish recognizing melody. That is interesting. Not as interesting as a super massive black hole in the center of our galaxy, but interesting none the less. Now, consider the kind of funding that would be needed to do this study. They are not going out catching sharks and building huge aquariums with specialized facilities to do this study. They are piping Christmas music through exi

Exactly the same thing I say whenever I hear more these silly stuff. I might be judgmental when I call this research silly, but all that effort could have been placed somewhere more productive (think humans). But then again, every aspect of science is important. I might not be interested in this but many others would.

Maybe it's just me who RTFA, but I'm not sure that the "scientists" at Loch Lomond Sea Life Centre are necessairly qualified to conduct human research. This isn't a university that's conducting this "research", it's an aquarium, and not one that receieves any tax *pounds* at that.

Yeah, this is an aquarium doing a little "research" for minimal cost to entertain visitors because "the sharks are listening to Christmas music too! That one over there, she really likes 'White Christmas!'" etc.

This is kindof like if Seaworld were conducting "research" to determine Shamu's favorite song. It isn't necessarily advancing science, it's to amuse their guests.

More interesting question would be the effect of Christmas songs on humans. More specifically, whether the endless playing of them in every store starting from at least a month before Christmas causes people to buy more crap. You'd think it would cause the stores must have researched that kind of stuff, but then every person I know regards them as an annoyance. Personally, I would go out of my way to shop at a store that doesn't play them if I could only find one.

I would imagine that the sharks, like me, will go out of their way to avoid the Christmas music. There is one station where I live that switches to 24/7 Christmas music starting before Thanksgiving. I can't listen to it for a full 6 weeks.
Of course, I will also avoid Christmas parties with anyone but friends and family, and yes we have the token mid 40's slightly frumpy woman at work who likes to put up all kinds of decorations and try to get us to play "Dirty Santa".
Fortunately, our Christmas party was o

Agreed. And what's the purpose of that image? I'd say it was the most useless image I've seen on a Slashdot article, but that honor goes to the artificial Christmas tree [slashdot.org] on an article about a guy who made a pyramid looking thing out of old hard drives.

Very wrong. Everyone who has been saying stuff such as "Waste of money" should just go back to reading their bibles.

How come it isn't important to research if the same kind of things affect the moods of animals that affect our moods? How can a point be made that it isn't exactly the kind of knowledge that progresses our understanding of the world around us?

In addition it has numerous practical uses. They range from calming animals in kennels, zoos, etc. to getting slightly more productive farms by just play

Half year or so the new idle was introduced - fine with me. Some stupid stories to waste time, nicely grouped together.

Then a few months ago now and then idle stories started making the front page. Acceptable, easy to filter using preferences.

But nowadays I see two, three of these idle type stories hit the front page every day! Now this stupid shark thing, masking as a science story. Appropriately tagged 'idle' already.

Please editors: keep idle type stories in the idle section, not in other sections, so we can filter them out if we like. And only real science stories in the science section. It's what those sections are made for, right?

Oh, good God yes. When one out of twenty stories is of the Idle variety, a story which must either be clicked on to view or briefly skipped over on the index, then Slashdot is truly ruined. What person would want this monster now?

Really now, I just can't understand all the vitriol spewed over Idle. I honestly have found just a small amount of it musing, but its overall impact on Slashdot as a whole is minuscule. If you hate it so much, just ignore the damn thing! Or, stop being an AC and then you can f

There is no reason that wifi over power lines should be federally banned as there is no proof that air guide signals impede the phase of electrical power signals, even 4 phase lines. It is known that wifi works on a QAM-8 orthaginal spacing while 4 phase always exhibits a rhomboid sine distribution. The twisted pair cross-current vs. serial overload buffer magnetisism is most overcome by employing a larger multi-linear, nor capacitance resistor in parallel with a Ombudsman-type ohm logger. It is true the

What they are going to do to these poor sharks is torture, like what they do in Guantanamo Bay! Don't be surprised if the sharks fight back and the next story will be about some eaten scientists. Pray that sharks don't decide to take it out on all the humans and start inventing lasers!

Seriously, I never thought it possible, but the universe has bent in such a way that the extreme insipid evil that are xmax carols inflicted on poor helpless sharks is funny. Really funny. Sad... but really funny!

Maybe we could find the actual sharks who have attacked humans and force them to listen to xmax music, ala "Clockwork Orange" to teach them a lesson. Let them free so that they will tell other sharks about the horrors.

Of course, then we will see sharks beaching themselves like dolphins just to get

Let's see... a government-funded study, to determine whether a sea animal likes music created by HUMANS.
Uh huh... right. You know what, screw all the bleeding-heart types. I think "boondoggle" is the word we're all searching for here.

Mr Brown said nurse sharks and other species of carpet shark which spend most of their time lying on the bed of the tanks, could be the best barometers for the impact of those pop tunes. Their reactions will tell the researchers whether the sharks are enjoying the music or whether it turns them off.

Everyone knows sharks must swim or die and, when the alternative was Christmas pop songs, they've made their choice.

including yours. Or maybe they're answering basic questions about the workings of fish which, like all basic research, may or may not pay off in the future. But you can bet that the scientists don't care any more than you do about the human significance of the tunes involved, despite the implications of your trollish post.

The other implication of posts like this is that the scientists are wasting money. Oh. I look at how, say, the DoD uses our money, and how the private sector (including, I daresay, *yo

Let me guess, certain songs will stimulate sharks. Does it mean they like the music? Or that the rhythm reminds them of the excited heartbeat of a baby seal? Maybe its the magnets in the speaker systems. Or the electricity in the wires. What about differing tastes of music between individual sharks? We don't actually assume that music preference is species wide for sharks, do we? Get ready for some serious bias in interpreting whatever results these experiments find.

There was a episode of Metalocyplse that portrayed the band Dethklok making metal music for fish. The song it self is "Go into the water", if you want to research it. It just seems so weird that someone would being doing something like this in real life.

Indeed, for those of us who suffered through the fads of the 1970's, there is a horrid piece of kitsch called "Santa Jaws", a parody of A Visit From Saint Nicholas, brought to you by the same source as the slightly more famous Mr. Jaws [youtube.com].

"Santa Jaws" is so (deservedly) obscure that it doesn't appear on YouTube nor are its lyrics available anywhere except here [blogspot.com] and only from memory, and only due to being unavailable anywhere else.